Issue - meetings

To receive a presentation giving an update on Your Care Your Way.

The Board received a presentation from Sue Blackman, Project Lead at B&NES Council and Jayne Carroll, Regional Director of Operations at Virgin Care.  A copy of the presentation is attached as Appendix 1 of these minutes.

In November the intention to award the contract for community health and social care services in B&NES to Virgin Care was announced.  The presentation covered the following issues:

·  Details of the Virgin Care Executive Team

·  Local Virgin Care delivery team structure

·  Virgin Care values and vision – Strive for better, Heartfelt service,  Team spirit

·  Over the forthcoming year the project would move into the transition stage.  It was important to effectively join up health and social care.  The focus would be on the individual and their needs to enable people to remain as independent as they can for as long as possible.  Information flows were very important.

·  Mobilisation would take place on 1 April 2017.  It was very important to ensure a safe transfer to Virgin Care.  Strong governance programmes were in place, a steering group had been set up and representatives from Virgin Care would join the group in December.

·  Managing the transfer of staff was also very important.  Safe and robust plans would be in place for Day 1 of the transfer.

·  There would be opportunities for both members and officers to scrutinise the contract.

·  Commissioning outcomes would be measured rather than purely input and output.

Questions

There was then an opportunity to ask questions regarding the your care your way project.  It was confirmed that the video regarding Virgin Care was available on the Virgin website. 

There would be opportunities for staff training and development and work was being carried out in conjunction with universities to provide this.  When populating the posts to be filled it was important to protect the rights of staff and to follow the TUPE process.  It was acknowledge that posts needed to be filled as soon as possible and Virgin Care would be working with Sirona to ensure that this happens.

Councillor Tim Warren thanked the B&NES staff for all the work they had undertaken on the your care your way project and for the open and transparent way this had been carried out.

Councillor Michael Evans welcomed the joining up of health and social care services but expressed disappointment that bed blocking was still taking place.  Officers stressed how important it was to work with GPs and acute providers to prevent any avoidable hospital admissions.  Benchmarking was regularly carried out with the aim of continually improving services and Virgin Care will become part of this process.

The Health and Wellbeing Board NOTED the update.